Season Five - Rise of Hellfire
by northtreker
Summary: As the Institute races to put itself back together after the Apocalypse crisis, new threats from within the mutant community strive to take advantage of the power vacuum. Can Xavier's students survive shifting allegiances and new foes? Can the still tenuous peace with non-evolved humans be maintained? Is there a place for normalcy in the lives of teenagers turned child soldiers?
1. Chapter 1 Sparks

Chapter 1 - Sparks

X23 grimaced, her senses sweeping the overfilled human cavern. Cement smells and steel smells and the stale chemical smell of HCFC-22 coolant slowly leaking from the HVAC system all drifted through her perception and were subsequently discarded as unimportant. She settled her makeshift rucksack, sewn from the remnants of Madam HYDRA's clothes, on the floor, carefully, so as not to jostle the precious cache of hard drives recovered from the ruins of the HYDRA command ship. A small sneer flickered across her lips, deeply tanned skin pulled tight under perpetual stress creasing momentarily. For a redoubt, the security here was pitiful, not that she had ever attempted to break into a commercial zone, but, still, the cinderblock walls would only repel small arms fire and one wall was made entirely of glass - an obvious trap. She wasn't sure what the mechanism was, but the only reason to have an apparent weakness was to lure assailants that way. Although, one this transparent was...insulting. Instead, she had slunk around the backside of the complex, counting off steps until she encountered a steel door in roughly the right location. One claw and a little force was enough to shear through the iron banded brass of the deadbolt and door latch. A small tug of resistance had alerted her to the presence of a paired magnet security alarm, but a shaved end of a magnetic something torn out of a ruined looking harddrive and some quick reflexes had bypassed the triviality.

The first room past the rear metal reinforced doorway was clearly intended for storage. Familiar metallic shelving and a variety of goods neatly organized into sturdy cardboard boxes was almost similar enough to a HYDRA nest to be comforting. The other room, the cavern room, however, was a nightmare. Wasteful arrays of mismatched shelving formed dangerous warrenous corridors and brilliantly pigmented marquis displayed encrypted information X23 could make no tactical sense of.

The place was, however, adequately quiet, and from the mostly still air she picked out the deep thrum of the building's air circulation system; the resultant baritone hiss of air forced through and out of aluminum ducts. There was fluttering paper, crinkling plastic and there, in one of the deeper most corners, farthest from the glass false way was a human heartbeat. Of course, X23 was also in the rearmost portion of the cavern room near the center where the storage room let out into the chaos room - a matter of only 30 feet separating her from the sonic signature. Worse, the sound producer was behind a series of low shelves that would reveal a standing child, let alone an adult, which indicated the contact had already noticed her and was seeking cover. Fangs glittering in a silent snarl, X23 burst forward into a stealthy sprint, mind already calculating the ideal kill sequence to silence the guard before it could deploy a weapon or a radio. Determining to simply drive her claws through the shelves and into the center of the sound source her plans were immediately halted by the snap hiss of a butane torch. A spin, a kick, and a left cross created two long gashes in the drywall separating her from the storage room, the metal door, and, hopefully, a safe distance from a thrown explosive. A moment later a sulfur sting of a scent alerted her to burning paper but with it came a heavier pungent purplish sort of a smell followed almost immediately by fear scent.

A soft, tremulous, voice reached out from the unknown contact in the corner. The voice sounded frightened, which was reasonable, but not hostile, which was not. The odd combination drew at...something beneath X23.

The vertical stroke had been nearly silent, but the lateral stroke had taken out three studs and alerted the guard. X23 knew she should run - to escape or to kill - but instead she hesitated. She felt... Her scowl returned etched deep into her face in true disgust this time. She felt...curious. A wholly unacceptable feeling and an error she had not self logged in months, not since the assault on Weapon-X's habitat at Xavier's. Arm blades working back and forth rending the tissues of her forearm only to have them heal and rend again, X23 prepared her error report for... for... for recalibration.

The wetware report only took one thousand seven hundred fifty milliseconds to complete but that was enough time for the contact to attempt communication. X23 knew she should abort the mission. Her cover was blown and this was not a critical locale, any commercial zone installation containing electronic merchandise would do just as well. Instead, to her disgust, she found herself stepping forward, mimicking the guard's call sign.

* * *

Eanruig Seaghdh stood at the stern of the little wooden boat and rolled his tired shoulders. "I don't know about this Rahney," his words almost drowned in a thick Scotch-Gaelic brogue. The teenage girl in the prow just lifted her shoulders into a noncommittal shrug. Privately, she was also having deep misgivings about her impulsive master plan, but she was nowhere near ready to voice those concerns.

What's a matter?" she asked, spinning around from her perch upon the prow from which she'd been keeping an eye out for rocks, "are you scared?" For a moment as she turned her long vividly red hair, unbound for a change to ward off the cold Scottish sea air, pooled across her face. In spite of himself Eanruig shuddered. While Rahne's hair usually minded him of red blaeberries, in that moment it had struck as more akin to blood running across her face.

Crossing himself more than half unconsciously, the taller youth muttered under his breath, "of course I'm scared I'm not a bloody superhero" but when he turned his face up to meet hers he wore a warmer if slightly sarcastic grin. "Worried about being woken up at quarter until first light with you about blowing up my phone with texts telling me to meet you at the key and now we're eight miles to sea near a creepy little slip of an island and you ain't said near a quarter score of words the whole way?" He pursed his lips and thought about it for a minute and then gave a little shrug. "Actually, that's pretty par for the course around you Elevensy. You always did play things close to the vest."

Rahne laughed softly and looked at her oldest friend. He had filled out considerably for a fifteen year old, years he had spent scrambling over the sea cliffs and shore hills with her finally catching up to him. His usually shaggy blond hair was matted down from the exertion of hand rowing their little dingy and his usually bright blue eyes were slightly muted but his sardonic grin was as ready as ever. Sitting in the prow, Rahne had to crane her neck to look up at him; even when both were standing her friend had nearly half a foot on her.

For a moment Rahne silently pouted, "when had that happened?" when she had left for Xavier's institute, almost a year ago now, she had been the taller one, if only just. Rahne sighed. Life at the institute had been amazing, she had had seven of the most perfect months imaginable. Sure there had been a lot of hard work, but it had been the first, and only, place where she felt like she could really be herself. "Besides," she murmured out loud, "I'm not a superhero, not anymore."

For a moment Eanruig blinked in honest confusion then he cursed and raked his fingers through his disheveled hair, "I said that out loud did I?" He sighed and took a long moment trying to organize his thoughts. He had known Rahne for most of his life. He could still remember the day Moira MacTaggert had brought her to school. She had been so...wild, and not in the hyperactive way that some of the other students were. She had been completely drawn in on herself, eyes darting about to track each new sign of movement, nose working - drawing in air so vigorously that from even on the far side of the swing-set there was an audible sound of...sniffing. In short, she was weird, and so immediately attracted the attention of the Goons - seven of the biggest and meanest of the fourth and fifth graders. He had wanted to warn her, he had, but a traitorous voice restrained him, grateful that he and his family situation were given a reprieve from their attacks.

He remembered that the entire playground had gone silent, like in one of the American cowboy movie showdowns, and Rahne, his fellow first grader, had looked terribly small surrounded by those boys, a couple of whom looked likely to need to start shaving any day now. But the inevitable didn't happen. There was a flurry of shouting back and forth and Iacob, the meanest of the pack cocked his fist back to strike, but the blow never landed. Instead he screamed and stumbled back, and there was the feisty little redhead her teeth sunk deep into the older boys wrist. Eventually, the teachers pried Rahne free with an audible pop and a spurt of blood. Rahne was sent home for a week and Iacob was sent for stitches.

When her exile was over Rahne had been surprised, and not entirely pleased, to learn that she was the new school celebrity. The Goons had terrorized nearly everybody and nearly everyone wanted to enjoy some vicarious revenge through the new girl. But all of Rahne's mumbled replies were noncommittal and she tried to downplay the whole affair. Gradually the pool of admiring students had diminished until it was just her and Eanruig. He was never quite sure why he had stayed, perhaps it was that he was comfortable with long silences, or that Ullapool was not a big place and Rahne had increased the population of first graders by thirty three percent, but mostly it was just that he had stayed.

From that a friendship had eventually germinated, one that spanned almost an entire decade, he knew his friend quite well now...and he knew if he didn't choose his words very carefully he was the one who was likely to get bit. Not that he was afraid of wolf-Rahne, at least, no more so than any other sane person is of a great big wolf driven by as quicksilver a mind as Rhaney's. Indeed, he had been one of the first to see her canine form when-

"Oh, for fuck's sake, Rig, dry up." Rahne snapped. A flicker of amber within the girls usually cool green eyes told him that he had taken too long to answer. "This is a perfectly good plan. We're just going to talk. And I know I'm pretty awesome but you are not allowed to hero worship me." She stuck her tongue out at him, "we established that years ago."

For a moment something flickered across Eanruig's face, something unsaid, but it was instantly washed away into a canary eating grin. "Oh, ho! So, we're going to meet someone are we? That's a start anyway. Who are we going to meet? And you're right. You are way too much of an Elevensy for that."

Rahne growled. "I am not an Elevensy!". Elevensy, her favorite most hated nickname, it was Eanruig's favorite way of calling her one short of a complete dozen.

"I don't know," he said, amused grin still fixed, "sneaking out in the middle of the night...sneaking out on your mother of all people...and going to meet someone on a deserted crag of an island...sounds like an Elevensy plan to me."

Rahne threw up her hands in frustration and turned to peer once more into the water under their prow. "Just row, my lord," this time there was a definite lupine growl underlying her words.

Breakbreakbreakbreakbreak

Rollings "Crispy" Johnson settled back on the cool tiled floor his head resting on a displayed car subwoofer system, the plastic mesh protecting the magnets making a surprisingly good pillow. His hands jittered slightly, evidence of the third Nos he had sucked down; the heavily caffeinated energy drinks were the only things that got him through the late night restocks. He looked at his watch, quarter of two in the morning and he still had to check to see if the CD's were alphabetized. He sighed and ran through a series of curses in English and Gaelic for the useless newbie who had failed to show up for his shift again. Frank, the night manager, had given up at one o'clock and told Crispy to lock up when he was through and that they'd take care of the rest in the morning. Frank was a good guy. He knew Crispy would rather stay and work up the overtime and, after working together for more than three years, the night clerksman felt no resentment over his friend wanting to knock out.

He did, however, feel that he had earned a reward. So he pulled a small plastic bag out of his inner shirt pocket and a small piece of paper out of his jeans and rolled himself a treat. Cylinder between his lips, he whipped out and flicked his Bic with a practiced fluid flourish when three sharp cracks made him yelp, snatch up his cigarette, and hide it behind his back. His first thought was that Frank had come back for some reason, which, friendship or no, would be a catastrophe if he found Crispy with the lighted package. His second thought was that an animal had somehow gotten in. Licking his lips, he was able to force out a single word deciding he'd try to swallow the evidence if Frank replied.

"Hello?" he asked the word, voice breaking halfway through, while his heart hammered, waiting for a reply. For a long moment the silence lingered and Crispy was just beginning to settle, deciding that he had been hearing things when a soft voice returned his greeting, mimicking the inflection and the break in the voice perfectly. But the pitch was high. Too high. Way too high to be Frank.

Silent expletives racing through his mind, Crispy crawled to the edge of the shelf and craned his head around the corner. Crispy frowned, frantic half formed possibilities that had formed in his mind twisted, tried to fit, and were discarded. The first thing he noted was her face. It was absolutely devoid of expression. It wasn't blank or disengaged, that would have been something. This was totally neutral and perfectly still, it was a mask of flesh that revealed absolutely nothing. Around her face were long, slightly wet, tangled shocks that ended haphazardly as if they had been knifed when they started to fray. Her eyes, however, were never still. They darted over the room, always checking what was going on around them but instantly snapping to his with animalistic intensity whenever he moved. The next glance brought heat to his cheeks; she was, mostly, wearing a heavy black jumpsuit but it was riddled with long slashes and small perfectly circular holes that reminded him of the holes left in pop cans he and his buddies had ventilated in high school. Incongruously with the remnants of the military looking suit, her feet were bare and the entire girl was covered in a thin sandy mud as if she had rolled in a stream before coming here.

Crispy winced at that, even in the summer, streams in New Brunswick ran cold. He ran his hand through his hair wondering what in the hell he was supposed to do. Or, at least, he tried to. He didn't think his hand had actually moved before he was spun around, his arm twisted up against his shoulder and his face crushed against the floor.

He shifted wondering what he was supposed to do now. One hand twisted into his collar, small fingers tightening with an oddly metallic pop, while two broad knives pressed along the line of his spine. Now Crispy knew exactly what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to lie very, very still.

* * *

The surf, rippling waves of the Sea of Man sluffed against the gravely beach of Priest Isle. Eanruig looked around the clearly deserted beach head and gave Rahne a baleful glare. "If I rowed three and a half hours for naught..."

Rahne looked around a deeply dissatisfied expression on her face. "I don't understand," she whined, "Moira said this is where the abbey that handled my adoption was."

Eanruig frowned. "Is that what this is all about Rahne? Are you still mad Lady MacTaggert brought you back home?"

"Yes," She growled, more than a little of the lupine coming out around the edges. "But it isn't that, really. I love me mum, I do. But for all her tinkering about with 'mutant genetics,'" Eanruig winced at the bitter tone accompanying those two words, "she can only tell me what I am. Xavier was telling me who I am. At least these people can tell me who I was. I want to be a who, Eanruig, not a what."

The pale redhead turned away surreptitiously scrubbing away a treacherous tear. Eanruig gave her a moment to compose herself and tried desperately to think of something to say. Her open anger about returning to Scotland - to him - stung more than he was ready to let her see. Taking a deep breath he forced his words out in a stumbling rush, "You are someone. You're Rahne, the Elevensy, and my oldest friend. Come on, let's head back. Ol' Maggie'll have a pot of fish chowder and I've a bottle or so of real Glenfidditch that needs tending too. Besides, this beach? This isn't the empty of abandoned, this is the empty of never was here."

Rahne's shoulders sagged. "Yeah, I guess you're right." Looking around dejectedly she sighed, "but I'm sure this is the place Moira said."

"Maybe they were shipwrecked? Some of those shore rocks are pretty unfriendly looking." He gestured at a small trihull with an outboard rigger that had clearly run afoul of the rocks and now sat listing heavily upon them. "Or maybe..." he paused, the sea breeze tousling his fine brown hair his best impish grin decorating his face, "you're fey born. I always said that you were more than a little moon touched."

On the verge of reaching out and finding if her best friend's best grin would be quite as charming after having been dunked in the sea, a sudden shift in the wind, dragging the air across the small island instead of blowing in from the sea, diverted Rahne's attention. Her head whipped across, nose tracking the faint brown gray scent of woodsmoke drawn across heavy peat. Her mind entirely focused on the scent, in a rush of impatient impulsivity to better track down the scent, she phased straight into her lupine form.

She knew it was a mistake before her forepaws hit the pebbles. While both forms weighed the same, their proportions were completely different. Her tail plumed out comically into her skirt, but her v-neck shirt stretched and popped alarmingly. Rahne cursed inwardly. She missed the clothing at Xavier's. Electromagnetic seams and a metallic mesh had detected the conductivity of her skin (and Ray's and Ororo's bolts) but the relative resistance of her fur interrupted the current making the garment fall away without damage. Phasing back had required a little more art, or some conveniently located screening, but it had become second nature...while she had had access to the Institutes resources.

It had been nostalgia that sent Rahne into her old wardrobe. That, and a year and two inches ago these clothes had been baggy enough not to present a problem and skirts, she had learned early on, were a gift from the Gods.

Shifting to her were - midform state - her blush was brilliant enough to shine through her finer muzzle fur. Still scarlet beneath her fur, Rahne hesitated before pushing down her skirt. It wasn't that she felt ashamed walking around in her hybrid and lupine forms, the fur was long and thick enough to provide ample modesty, and, besides, clothing pressing down on her fur felt distinctly unnatural.

She and Logan had had many heated arguments on this point. He insisted that she needed the extra protection afforded by body armor like that which was built into the other x-men's uniforms, and when it came to that point she didn't disagree, but whenever they tried it, the constant pressure and sensory deprivation cause the wolf within her to have a panic attack. Still, at Xavier's the clothing had burst out as a part of the transformation. Actually having to take them off was much, much worse.

Fortunately, Eanruig could read the distress in her face, or else knew her well enough, for when she turned back, he had already turned his back on her, ears and neck scarlet with a blush that deepened Rahne's own. With a few hurried movements, Rahne bundled her clothes into her skirt and tied it to the two ends of a stick. Shifting back to full wolf she grabbed the stick, flipped it over her neck, and gave a soft muffled "wulf" to tell her friend to turn around.

* * *

X23 hesitated. Standard operating procedures were to eliminate all unknown contacts and to secure all mission criticals. Her prisoner did not match any known physiological profiles, was of unknown characteristics and capabilities, and, worse, was, poorly, concealing a chemical agent of unknown capacity. She tensed the slingshot like muscles that extended her claws, ready to pop them quickly and isolate c4 from the rest of his spinal column, killing him almost instantly. But before she could release, the retractor muscle anchored to the distal terminus of her humorous spasmed, locking her claws in place.

X23 growled. Leaving the guard alive was unwise but she did not have a specific kill order for this individual and with the waves of fear scent washing off of him, a slower method of dispatch seemed...unnecessary. Plus, there was still that disconcerting sensation of curiosity. Letting the game of muscular tug of war end with a sigh, X23 retracted her adamantium claws with a familiar shhnnk as the bonded metal on her twin claws slid along the space between her similarly encased radius and ulna, forcing the two bones apart. Turning her side to the prone officer so the lines of force fell along her shoulders and hips, she heaved him to his feet and then caught his arm twisting it and forcing it up onto the verge of dislocation. "Name, rank, and serial number" her voice rapped out the familiar litany. There was a long pause while her prisoner, who had foolishly raised himself onto his toes, danced around. After a suitable pause of six thousand milliseconds X23 repeated her quarry in an even more authoritative bark.

The boy danced about before for another second before replying. Unfortunately, "what?" did not fit within the matrix of expected responses. Still, this was Canada, and X23 decided to give the guard one more chance before engaging in advanced interrogation techniques. Loosening the tension on his arm to a level suitable for a first query she repeated her question "nom, grade, numéro de série militaire. Qui travaillez-vous?".

"I don't understand. My name? I'm Rollings, Rollings Johnson. Why? What do you want?"

X23 decided to ignore the questions, at least she was getting somewhere. Clearly she had captured an idiot, or else his company kept shockingly lax discipline. "What is your rank?"

"I don't understand. I don't really have a rank. I'm a stocker." He gestured at a small plastic ID on a lanyard around his neck. X23 flicked her hand out, neatly looping the ribbon of fabric over her captive's head. The picture on the card matched the young man before her, and the name matched the one he had given. The reverse side had a magnetic reader strip and a serial number, obvious falsification points to prove the ID and bearer were genuine - not that she had a database or a reader to confirm his story. However, the front of the card listed his position as "night clerk" not "stocker".

She whipped him about, to look up into his eyes. Facial expressions were an imperfect tell, but this Rollings seemed so open that it would either be highly effective or else he was a deep cover master. "Which are you, a night clerk or a stocker?"

He blinked and his eyebrows furrowed in confusion, but his eyes remained dilated in fear, and his scent mirrored his expression. "A night clerk is just a fancy way of saying I restock the shelves. I handle the stock. So I am a stocker."

X23 nodded. Shorthand. That made sense. "But why do you restock the shelves? What other duties do you hold? What are the security protocols?"

Crispy grimaced briefly, his thoughts spinning toward the security system. She must have tripped the alarm breaking in. The police should be there soon. And he was a hostage. How often did stand offs work out in the hostages benefit? A slight increase in the pressure on his arm forced his tongue loose, "I, nothing. I don't provide any security. I just do the shelves. Because, you know, people buy things and the sales clerks don't have time to do it during the day."

"You provide no security?" the flat disbelief in her voice made sweat pop on Crispy's skin.

Crispy shook his head vigorously. "The alarm. Police. Be here soon." The hard angry face before him showed no reaction, not even a flicker of concern, but abruptly she was holding his Bic before him little flame burning steadily and the eyes seemed to, impossibly, harden farther. "That? It's just a lighter. It's harmless. For my cigarette-" a quick jab to his trachea had turned stammered answers into a series of choking coughs. X23 ran her hands over his front in a quick but efficient body search and then she spun him around to give his back the same treatment. His wallet had been quickly tossed, the drivers license compared to his face and his ID and then quickly kicked back towards the stockroom. She'd pulled open his half empty pack of cigarettes and sniffed them experimentally before wrinkling her nose and tossing them over to where his wallet had wound up. His cellphone had undergone more scrutiny. She had checked for recent calls and recent messages and then carefully searched for any alternate messaging app that could have been used to send an alert. Finding nothing she ripped open the back. The phone went onto the pile but the battery had gone into a pocket in her jumpsuit and she had swallowed the SIM card.

X23 pushed him away and he fell to the ground still coughing. She couldn't understand. There was nothing about him to indicate that he was a guard. He hadn't even had defensive weapons. But why leave a redoubt completely undefended? She closed her eyes and tilted her head back pulling the air, the scents, into her, but she could smell no living thing besides the boy, herself, a small line of ants and a couple of mosquitoes. There weren't even any mice.

Slowly, so slowly, she sank down to the ground. She ordered her knees to hold her up, but they refused to obey. How could this be? How could they survive like this? How could they still be alive? HYDRA had taught her the ways of the world. Everyone was evil. Everyone was always looking for the ideal time to kill to get ahead. They had let her read the news. Murder reports and battle reports. She wasn't living any differently than anyone else. She was HYDRA's weapon because everyone had weapons. She killed because otherwise others would kill her or her masters and then she'd be dead or alone in the deadly world. She had killed all those people because those people had needed to die. But now she had killed HYDRA and she was alone in the killer world. And she had killed all those people in the world. And she was alone. And no one was killing her. And this Rollings was alone. And he was defenseless. So no one was killing him. Except her. He had needed no weapons. And she was a weapon.

* * *

Eanruig sighed. Again. He felt like he had been sighing for hours now. Rahne had just started to see sense and to concede that there was nothing of interest on Priest Isle when she had suddenly spun and blurred. He had seen her wolf out many times in the past, before she left. At first having a werewolf best friend had been beyond awesome. At least until he found out how much wolf had come with the were.

The first time had been shocking but ultimately uneventful. They were racing to Dunharrow, each taking the path they thought was best. He had gotten upon the bluffs, a fair step ahead of her, and watched as she tore along the serpentine seaward pass. Around one bend he say two flickers of bobbing red pigtails, maybe a quarter mile behind him. Then, a half a minute later, he saw a decent sized red wolf tearing off along the same pass. He had instantly panicked and began scrambling down the broken sea cliffs. Eanruig was no woodsman, but he had been running on the heath long enough to recognize a footprint - both canine and hominid and the proximity of the two in the coarse Scottish sea sand had sent chills down his spine. The next part of his memory was confused. He remembered running and calling her name and then she had come trotting from the direction the wolf had gone. She looked terrible, pale and sick and she was holding up her jeans with one hand. The collar of her t-shirt was stretched oddly, like she had been grabbed from behind; when he spun her around and lifted her rain cloak, checking to see where he needed to start first aid, the back of her jeans had been shredded. There was, however, no blood, no angry gouges where the wolf's teeth and claws should have rent her skin. As his adrenaline started to drain, Rahne was able to pull free.

"I'm fine," she complained.

Eanruig's brain had been still struggling to catch up. "You went after the wolf?" he accused, incredulity so strong that it brought strains of anger into his usually placid voice.

"Not...not exactly." Eanruig could still remember how weak and sickly and…broken his best friend had sounded, "I think…I think I am the wolf."

Eanruig blinked. It was the best response he could come up with. Rahne looked back pleading, terror shimmering in her eyes. Taking a deep breath Eanruig ran his tongue along his lips trying to actually produce sound this time, "You think you're a werewolf? For real?"

She just nodded, sniffling, waiting for him to run away.

"That is too cool!" And it was, at first to Eanruig alone, but eventually his enthusiasm had caught on. There had been a fortnight of fun. They had found a hollowed out cairn where Rahne could change and they had played out on the heath. It had been one of the best times of Eanruig's life. Rahne had always had a couple of inches on him and had usually dusted him whenever they raced, but the couple of times they had rough housed had ended in tears.

Of course, that had been years earlier and bouts of king of the mountain had given way to "lost" and tramping about the countryside looking for mysteries which they could unravel. Which, when the mysteries proved few and far between, led to just tramping around, and foot races, which he didn't enjoy quite as much.

Now they had been tearing along the moor playing keep away with a yard of heavy nylon rope, each enjoying their new muscles, those just forming in the thirteen year old boy and those new found in his suddenly dogged peer. Happy yells and yips echoed across the empty landscape as they slammed into each other, fighting over the cord.

But, Eanruig sighed, again, still trudging after wolf-Rahne, it had been like they said, it is all fun and games until someone loses an eye... or a hand. It had been an unusually hot summer last year, Eanruig paused, had it really only been a year?, and one particularly fierce day had forced them out of the heath and onto the beach. There was nowhere to change, but that was okay, the wolf was fine, but sometimes it was nice to talk too.

The water was cold but the air was hot and this yielded alternating series of floating calmly about just past the knee high breakers to cool down and racing frantically up and down the beach to warm up. The competition of the races had begun to spill into the water, and their last dip had devolved into a splashing match which he had gotten the worst of. A particularly one sided race, also in Rahne's favor, had followed and Eanruig, his head drooping in remembered shame, had found that his blood had gotten hot. As soon as they had swum to deep water, he had hopped onto Rahne's shoulders, dunking her.

Both had forgotten the need to be careful and, as Rahne wasn't struggling all that hard yet, Eanruig held her down in juvenile maliciousness. The redhead, meanwhile, had inhaled a half a cup of bright stinging sea water in her initial surprise as she had gone under. She had instantly panicked and the wolf within half rose up in her mind. Her body was not fully controlled by either mind, and her reactions were weak and muddled. But as her human mind spun out in panicked thoughts, the tighter fear driven instincts of the wolf pulled together, changing her body as her mind clarified, clamping her fully lupine muzzle on her attacker's hand. Hard.

Eanruig could remember the sequential progression of the bite: teeth on skin, teeth through skin, teeth on bone, teeth shattering bone. His scream had invited the ocean into his mouth, and the sea had obliged, cutting off his cry into a gurgling cough. The cry had driven Rahne back to herself. Somehow she had dragged them both back to shore and even somehow muscled him up the path to the access road. She couldn't remember racing to Moira's and could barely remember the trip back.

Apparently, she had babbled everything because by the time Moira bundled Eanruig into the car, after tying on a makeshift tourniquet, she was fully the Lady MacTaggert. Eanruig sobbed out apologies but to his surprise she took the dunking in stride calling it "shockingly stupid" and an "act beneath his station". She was, however, more than livid that the two of them had concealed the depth and progression of Rahne's mutation. At first Eanruig tried to rally to Rahne's defense, but his best friend's adopted mother wasn't upset about the transformations, just the concealment. Arguments like the very real threat posed by shepherds protecting their flock and hunters looking for a bounty or other wolves patrolling their territory left him gaurdless and blanched.

The need for Eanruig to conceal the source of his wound was met without opposition, not that Moira had expected any. They spent a brief time hashing out their story, but the pain in his hand, which had gradually been pulling the teenaged boy towards shock, finally won over. Rahne, for her part, had been in near catatonic horror for the duration of the ride to the hospital.

Eanruig flexed his hand, mostly returning to the moment. The looping path Rahne had been setting was getting tighter. The bones in his hand had healed but the best surgeons in London had only been able to partially restore sensation.

Even he could smell the wood smoke now, but the low craggy landscape of the island remained stubbornly bare. They turned a corner where a small run crept between two hills. The absolute silence about them made the twined metallic cocking of two shotguns sound even more ominous.


	2. Chapter 2 Where There's Smoke

Chapter 2 – Where There's Smoke

The Lady Moira Mactaggert threw down her phone with an anguished sobbed. The antique handle missed the receiver crashing instead upon deep blue granite countertops the porcelain mouth piece shattering into dust. She and Rahne had had a fight. A big one. News from the mutant world did not often seep into the mainstream media, but these pyramid things were beginning to gain air coverage. Pictures of an unknown white haired mutant who had fought a giant spider in London and had disappeared in a purple shimmer near Cairo were being picked over by the six o'clock talking heads. Rahne had insisted that she knew the mutant, that it was Magneto, and that her friends would need her help.

Moira believed her about the first point. It had been years since she had seen Erik personally, she had been a liaison with the CIA at that point, but it could be the same man. Besides, she knew that her daughter had seen Magneto more recently than her. But on the other point, that Xavier needed her, she refused to concede. In Moira's opinion the chess game between Xavier and Leisher left little room for any other mutants to make any big plays. Sure, she and Charles had discussed rumors of a resurgent Hellfire Club and the something Te, the something hand in Japan, but that was before Charles had opened his "school". Moira had never approved, insisting the whole thing had far too militaristic a bent.

Xavier had always insisted that he was training his students for peace keeping missions, but, Moira contended, a name was not a raison d'être and naming the United Nation's forces peacekeepers did not keep them from being an army. And, besides, at least the military had age restrictions. Her arguments had left the mind reader flustered, angry even if you knew how to read him. And Moira could read Charles very well. They had been friends for years, ever since Charles's first, failed, ingathering of mutants to resist Sebastian Shaw. There was even a time when she thought he loved her. Well, that wasn't fair, she had loved him, and he her, but he loved his cause more, and she her sciences.

Xavier had tried to twist her arguments around. He insisted that if she really was afraid that he would brainwash these children that the best way to counteract that was to serve as their psychologist. He reminded her that was a fully qualified therapist as well as holding degrees in genetics and biochemistry. Eventually he had broken down and admitted he needed her, pleaded even, in his own stiff way. It had been a narrow thing, very narrow, but eventually Moira had had to refuse. She just couldn't allow herself to get mixed up in the militarizing of children again however benign the mission statement. She just couldn't after the debacle with Division X...after Charles allowed her to remember it. That moment had been emblematic of their relationship. The trust to let her in, and the fear that kept her at bay. Xavier's intentions, she knew, were generally in the right place, but his actions often crossed the line. And as weapons or bulwarks, she had seen enough during the cold war to know, the militarizing of humanity led only to harm.

When planning led to implementing the relationship quickly unthreaded. The ending had been a time in coming and the breaking wasn't particularly acrimonious, at least insofar as a seven year relationship and four years of cohabitation can finish amicably. Xavier left, returning to his childhood home in New York, in America, an ocean away. He had said that a clean break would be best. And for herself, Moira agreed, but Rahne, her daughter, was devastated.

Xavier had been a fixture in her life for as long as Moira had, more distantly at first, but Rahne had been seven when Xavier moved in. The two had quickly bonded. Moira wasn't sure how much of that was Charles's personality, he had been freer then, younger too, and how much was due to his innate gifts, but he had known all the things to say and do that would delight the feisty little redhead. A year later he disappeared for six weeks to see to some sort of trouble in Africa. He had returned with a quiet young nineteen year old woman. Ororo hadn't spoken much English and while she and Moira could both speak French neither knew the others dialect nor could they easily penetrate the others accent. Not that their relationship had been antagonistic, Ororo was unfailingly polite and Moira tried to make her feel at home it had just been uncomfortably quiet with most communication passing telepathically with Charles as the medium.

It was Rahne who broke the impasse, clambering up the older girl's bed one night with a copy of Swiss Family Robinson in one hand and a flashlight in the other. Scooting up next to Ororo she held the book open so they could both see it, she had begun reading shining the light in the page to see by and flipping to the pictures that started the chapters to point out some of the things the book had been talking about. Eventually Rahne had passed Ororo the little light, her arm too tired to hold it up. Shortly thereafter the pace and tone of the reading fell away and the little girl turned and snuggled into her. Completely at a loss as to what she was supposed to do next Ororo clicked off the flashlight, pulled up her pillow, nested it behind her head, and awkwardly went to sleep half sitting up on the edge of her bed.

The next morning, she was awakened by the worried tones of Rahne's mother softly calling for her daughter while trying not to disturb her sleeping guest. Stretching, the teenager called out, "La jeune fille est ici." The Lady Mactaggert scolded Rahne, of course, for disturbing Ororo insisting that she had to sleep in her own bed. The only message Rahne, took from this, however, was that she needed to sneak back into her covers before she became too tired to stay awake. So it went for days, for weeks, for months - her mother would retire for the evening and Rahne would count to twenty before padding out Johann David Wyss or J. M. Barrie or J. K. Rowling or Robert Louis Stevenson and a flashlight secreted away in her little bag. Overtime, and over books, the child and the adolescent bonded. Eventually, and with the aid of private tutoring funded by Moira and Xavier, Ororo was able to creep into Rahne's room and read her stories until the girl fell asleep.

They were in many ways as close as sisters separated by more than a decade can be, closer perhaps because both had been torn away from their families. But Ororo, having been coerced by the Hungan and the elders of her tribe into using her weather gifts for the benefit of the tribe, and for the detriment of the neighboring tribes, believed that mutants needed isolation from the general populace in order to secure their own freedoms. Xavier's views were more moderate, and he and Moira worked to temper her jaundiced view of the general population, but ultimately she felt that an institution for mutant and run by mutants was a necessity and her complementary viewpoint fueled Charles's dreams of a new mutant school; one independent from governmental objectives.

When the inevitable parting occurred Rahne did not take it well. She blamed her mother for not wanting to go and, more, Ororo for wanting to leave. Ororo had an older half-sister whose mother had taken her to New York some years earlier as a part of the Hart-Cellar Act to escape the latest waves of unrest. Ororo's mother had elected stay, and the two had effectively lost touch. When Moira managed to track down Ororo's sister Rahne saw it as an act of betrayal, and felt that Ororo's decision to move away to live near her sister, her other sister as the girl saw it, meant that, of the two, she was the least loved.

Moira had genuinely feared for her daughter; she seemed so wild, and so lost. It was like she had been in the state hospital Moira had adopted her from. A little over ten years there had been a news story about a young woman, who was barely in her twenties, who had washed ashore near Ullapool on a makeshift raft. She had born injuries from severe beatings: bruises and broken and malset bones, but more disturbing were the obvious signs of torture: her lips and tongue had been surgically removed and extensive burning covered her body. Still, more disquieting, if such was possible, she was clutching a small child, four or five years old, who had, apparently, been subjected to even more inhumane treatment.

There was some degree of disagreement over how many of the child's disfigurements were some sort of birth abnormality and how many were the marks left behind from abuse. The thick rusty brown hair covering the entirety of her body and the butterscotch eyes almost had to be natural, while the teeth, filed to points, the ears, which had been surgically removed and attached near her temples while the holes leading to her cochlear had been left unguarded, and the joints in her elbows and knees had been broken and fused backwards, were all certain signs of maltreatment. The mother never made it to a hospital, but the daughter was stabalized at Ross Memorial Hospital in nearby Dingwall before being flown to Raigmore Hospital in Inverness for more extensive treatment.

The media has been properly outraged and the story had run for weeks. Moira hasdbeen more professionally interested and had pulled a few strings, pushing the weight of her Scottish peerage farther than it would really go. A small but vocal Gaelic five percent had insisted in Gaelic representation at Ospadal an Rathaig Mhòir and, despite not having a formal medical degree, Moira was appointed the genetic liaison to the girl's team of physicians. There were still ruffled feathers over that. Gene sequencing and marking still were not quick, or cheap, back at the turn of the millennium but Moira was convinced she had found another mutant, and not just an individual suffering the results of a genetic anomaly, but a person blessed with an entirely new spontaneous gene sequence...a real ex-factor.

It was vindication for years of research, for years of belief that the next stage of human evolution was not the gradual process it was generally believed to be but was arriving chaotically as a sudden flourish of new diversified genotypes - that people with capacities never or rarely seen before would soon make themselves known - a minority of Harrison Bergerons. Despite having run Division X the CIA refused to admit that Mutants existed and, coupled with what they dubbed her "convenient case of amnesia," Moira's constant, and relatively public, assertions of their existence eventually caused her to be washed out of the agency. It had nearly cost her her doctorate too, despite the strength of her models. It was only her masters of science in biological chemistry and her status as a chartered member in the British Psychological Society that kept her arguments from being dismissed out of hand. As it was, her dissertation was used as an example of what not to do vis-à-vis taking a sound idea into the realm of the fantastic and she had acquired something of a reputation for living on the fringe.

Consequently, she was convinced that the bulk of the girl's problems were not morphological but phenotypical, driven directly by the expression of her genes and not a chance arrangement of her tissues. And the girl's problems were legion. A full body MRI had revealed that almost ever organ displayed abnormalities. There was a distinctly Canidae flavor to the spots of mutation, but, more to the point, the hominidesque and caninesque regions were not properly communicating. The surgical team had already fitted the girl with a pacemaker to try to even out the seque ce beteweem her missmatched ventricles and aorta and had excised regions of floundering and flatly dying abberamt tissue but the latest MRI showed that they were returning aggressively. They were going to attempt irradiating the unknown tissue as the patient was deemed to weak to endure chemo, but it wasn't clear how many curries the young child could survive either. In short, the nameless girl was dying, fast.

* * *

Everything had happened so fast that Rahne's brain struggled to keep up. She was in a cell four feet wide and six and a half feet long. The only light came from a bare bulb hung on the hallway outside of her cell. Not that there was much to illuminate. The cage wall was made of a double row of four inch thick close set metal bars. A narrow space between them formed a sort of passageway between the offset doors, one opening into the room and the other opening out to the hallway. The bars were made of a darkly patinaed metal that reminded Rahne of Moira's best silver serving set after it had sat unpolished between the holidays. Of course, as thick as the bars were, it hardly mattered what the bars were made of and the spaces between the were too small for a cat, let alone a girl or a wolf, to fit through. Beyond the first gate, two cameras set in the walls near the ceiling were angled to cover the entirety of her cell. Rahne tried to reach them, Logan's voice rumbling in her memory telling her to always put out her enemies eyes, but the cameras were mounted too high for Rahne to jump up and reach them with her paws.

She tried howling, but after her calls echoed away into silence she settled in to take stock of her situation. Other than the bars of her cell the other five walls were solid damp granite. The ceiling sloped dramatically toward the back. While the cameras were mounted easily eight feet off the ground, she doubted Scott could have stood unbent on her side of the bars or that Kitty could have stood against the far wall. The height of the ceiling didn't matter much to her as a wolf, but it would if she returned to her human form. The wolf, however, was more bothered by being captured. Rahne could already feel its panic, the instinctive terror of being restricted battering against her mind. Forcing herself to breathe, she continued through her initial assessment. The "bed" was was a dark green woven plastic cot. There was a spigot in the wall above a rough hewn off copper pipe. In the center of the floor was a large open drain hole. Rahne could hear rats in the pipes. The air was stuffy and stale. She couldn't smell the faintest trickle of fresh air to direct her to a window...to an exit. Even her fur smelled stale which meant she had been down here for a while. For how much of that she had been unconscious she could not say.

She held onto her training, nose sifting the air for clues. She could barely smell the cordite on her skin, so it had been a long while, but she wasn't sure how close to the shotgun blast she had been so she couldn't formulate a real time line. Couldn't tell if... She swallowed, a large lump forming in her throat. Thinking about her fellow...ex-fellow...x-men had hurt, but thinking about Eanruig was unbearable.

They had emerged without warning. Stepping out of perfectly concealed doors built into the rock face of the narrow channel through which the stream had run. Three men, two holding shotguns and one, the last to emerge, had held a rosary wrapped around his fingers while in his left hand was, of all things, a silver rapier, had simply appeared from nowhere. The rapier had flicked in Eanruig's direction and the shot guns had followed. Rahne had leapt, dropping her bundle of clothes to drive her fangs into the closer man's wrist. Bones snapped but the discharged shot swallowed the scream and threw up a fountain of earth. The other shotgun, however, had now been leveled at Eanruig. Too close, much too close, and too far to do anything about. The finger around the trigger curled, Rahne heaved herself into the air, and all the fire in the world exploded into her lungs. She had gone down, the world already monochrome and hazy. A new fire, thin but long lanced into her aorta. The first two strokes drew nightfall. The third cardiac stab drove Rahne into utter darkness.

Rahne sobbed shaking her head trying to dispel the memories replaying over and over in broken disjointed tracks. The sound came out strangely, her lupine form was not built for crying, but her human soul was reeling. She didn't know if her best friend had escaped or was being hunted, or had already been killed. She didn't even know if he had survived that first shot. Hours passed. She had no idea how many, but the monotony had long since begun to wear on her when, in the distance, a metal door creaked open and then closed with a heavy clang. Two pairs of booted feet approached carrying something warm blooded. Rabbits? A little over a minute later they appeared wearing white robes with a red downward facing sword entwined with a double helix of snakes, their heads pierced by the tip and tails tied to the pommel emblazoned on their chest. A golden L was embossed in the center of the blade. Both had a large heavy hunting rifle slung across their backs, and between them they carried an aluminum mesh cage holding three small rabbits. The metal clattered softly as they lowered it, followed by the louder, sharper sound of two rifles being cocked. Rahne slowly backed away to the back of her enclosure fighting to keep her hackles down and her muzzle smooth. There was something about these two, something about their smell, that triggered her wolf's instinctive alarms. It was a steadiness, a perfect surety that no sapient animal could achieve. It was the frenzied shark, the snapping alligator, the charging bull: heedless but unflappable. The drumming of her heart as her fur flattened against the rear wall almost drowned the double retorts of the rifles. Almost. A shattering in her thigh and a tugging in her neck echoed the crashing ringing noise and in the chaos of Din oblivion overtook her again.

* * *

Crispy was on his hands and knees. His raging throat had, mercifully, finally allowed air through to his lungs. Everything had been happening so fast he couldn't understand how one stage had lead to the next. They had just started to seem to be connecting when she had hit him and then she had collapsed like a marionette whose strings had slowly come unspooled. She looked so small with her knees drawn up to her chin. Her face was somehow different too. Softer. Terribly young. Sadder too, but somehow that seemed less tortured than the fixed non-expression she had worn earlier. This new mode, it looked so much more human; it triggered Crispy's compassionate side. He reached out for her but even huddled in she had pulled away and he let his hand fall. "Why are you here anyway? Where are your parents."

"I don't have any," she mumbled into her legs.

"Oh." The silence stretched each trying to imagine the other's world. Slowly Crispy watched her spine unbend, the nothingness creep back into her face. It was heartbreaking. "You can't keep doing this, you know. Stealing, using force to get what you want. It'll catch up to you sooner or later."

She shrugged and Crispy supposed that it already had. "Isn't there someone I can call? There must be somewhere you are supposed to be."

Her quick silver responses surprised him again. For a moment purest anger raged across her face, little fists balling up, and sschwing four metal blades thick but razor thin exploded out of her hands, two from each fist. Crispy yelped and luck more than fortitude saved him from soiling himself. Her voice, when it came, was low and hissing, the words almost lost in their animalistic pronunciation, "There was. Places they made me belong so I didn't belong elsewhere. Storage spaces. Training spaces. T-," the briefest tremble made the young girl voice creep into the confusing litany before being subsumed in the intensity of the animal rage, "teaching spaces. And one other. A germinating place. A gestating place. A place I was and need to be again."

Crispy's brows furrowed as he tried to arrange the confusing string of half sentences into something he could comprehend. Clearly the girl, the mutant, was on drugs or insane. The latter two points, he knew, did not bode well for his survival. He knew he had to keep her talking, knew that, whatever the girl's strange confident demeanor, the police, sooner or later, had to come. "So your parents kicked you out?" he asked. Her tense, defensive attitude let him know that he misstepped. Cursing inwardly he tried to recover, "I mean. It's just not true. That you are alone. There are child protective serves that would give you a place. I am sure they could find a nonspeciesous setting in Halifax or Toronto or maybe even in St. John."

Crispy relaxed, his voice dropping down from the falsetto registry, in tune with the girl but she only shook her head in quick negating strikes. "I need to get to this place."

"So you just need to look something up? Couldn't you, I don't know, look it up at the library or something?"

"Would the library allow me to disassemble their computers?"

"Well ... no."

"Then I require these computers which I can disassemble."

"You want to take apart our computers? Why?"

She took so long in answering that Crispy had about decided that she wasn't going to at all when slowly her wicked blades had retracted into her body with a wet metallic grinding sound. She curled her fingers into a becoming gesture, getting back on her feet with the same exaggerated slow care. "There, in the storage room" she said, following him in. "The duffel bag. Pick it up.". Crispy hesitated but for a change non compliance brought a softening, not a hardening of her voice. "They aren't dangerous I promise, at least, not in and of themselves." The claws gestured at the bundle of rags on the floor. Crispy grimaced, the look on the girls face retained some of its softness, but her eyes continued to dart about and, well, it was difficult not to be intimidated by those four heavy blades. Fingers trembling lightly he worked at undoing the complicated knot that held the package together. Inside was a cache of small rectangular metal objects. It took his beleaguered mind a second to realize what they were, hard drives, more than two dozen of them, but most had been smashed or bore scorch marks.

"Where did you get these?"

X-23 shrugged, her voice indifferent, "they were forfeits of my enemy."

"But, but how..."

"I killed her."

Crispy licked his lips, oh cripes, was that ... satisfaction ... in her voice? He desperately didn't want to ask, he definitely couldn't stop himself from asking, "why?"

For a moment her face remained blank, the mask firmly in place, "because she needed too..." and then the girl convulsed, subtly, but Crispy was getting better at reading her, and for a moment, just a flicker of a moment, the mask dropped completely hate, pure and human roiled in those eyes while a pain that transcended anything in Crispy's human experience marred her face, "because I wanted to." The confession was a whisper, to quiet for Crispy to really hear, but watching her lips he was pretty sure he understood.

"And," voice catching Cripsy tried again, "and do you want to kill me?"

Surprise filled the girl's eyes, "No. No I don't."

* * *

Eanruig heaved as quietly as he could, his body flung flat into a small hollow in the earth. His face and his right arm were a riot of pain. Blood dripped into the stony ground. A lot of it was his. A lot of it was Rahne's. Some it was the killers. They had, clearly, been exceptionally well trained. They also had experience with situation exactly like this before, Eanruig was sure. As one the shotgun wielders had dropped their weapons. The uninjured man had scooped up the wolf and ushered the sword carrier through the stone door. The other pulled a side pistol, trained it on Eanruig, and fired. The only thing that saved him from collapsing in shock was the roiling pain in his face and shoulder. As it was, the line of fire drawn in one side of his bicep and out the other served only to throw another log on an already blazing inferno. And that was nothing to the guilt of running. Not that he had really decided too, h had just started running.

In the back of his mind a jumbled litany of advice, everything he had ever learned about serious wounds skittered and snarled. He had tried blinking furiously to clear the obstinate darkness out of the left side of his world until he had gradually realized it never would. Beyond pain, beyond guilt, hovered a new emotion – anger. He may never had become a match for Rahne, but he had been training his running. skills while she had been in the states. He had learned hos to move efficiently over loose scree and his sure deliberate pressing footfalls propelled him quickly ahead of his killer. The strange white robed man, for his part, had quickly realized that he cold not catch the fleeter teenager and chose to stop bracing his body to lend accuracy to his pistol-fire instead. None of the bullets left in the clip connected, but for of the five had passed close enough that Eanruig heard the whine of their passing before the crack of the retort.

Stumbling down a hill, Eanruig drew out a leatherman multi-utility knife from his pocket. Ducking behind a tree he tugged off his shirt and, cutting off the bottom hem, fashioned a make shift tourniquet. Wrapping it about his left arm he pulled tight forcing the blood to cease pumping into, and out of, his mangled arm, weakening him and marking his path with every treacherous beat. There wasn't as much that cold be done for the blood, and other fluids, dripping down his face. He blotted as well as he could, but the pain brought hot white flickers dancing beneath his eyelids. The landscape was not blessed with an an abundance of vegetation. Most of what grew on the coarse gravely soil were gray sear grasses and pools of prickly juniper. However, the trees which did survive grew into dense blue green pines. Eanruig stumbled to the nearest pine and heaved. Only having one working arm seriously complicated the procedure and he fell out of the tree on his first attempt. The second went a little better. He was able to scramble into a fork in the tree and then get his leg over a branch. He wasn't high in the tree, maybe seven feet, and the needles provided only scant screening at this level. Still, the trembling in his muscles forbore climbing higher.

He didn't have long to wait. The man appeared over a low hill walking quietly but unhurriedly checking the ground often, following Eanruig's blood trail. The man moved with the calm efficiency of an armed hunter quartering a defenseless quarry. Eanruig was able to get a good look at the silent solider for the first time. He was older than the boy expected, gray hair obvious even from this distance. The man wore a brilliantly white cloak with a red emblem across the chest which Eanruig couldn't quite make out. Splattering of rust on the side and a brilliantly red bandage wrapped about his wrist spoke of the efficacy of Rahne's jaws.

The man stopped at the end of Eanruig's blood trail. and looked around with a grimace of deep dissatisfaction etched into his face. He slowly reached into a pocket sewn in the middle of the cloak and pulled out a walkie talkie. Tapping the antenna against his lips he scanned the horizon. Eanruig held his breath, wold the man give, call in and say that he had escaped or would he call in and ask for reinforcement. His entire body seized up, held rigid waiting for a call of respite or ruin. Neither happened. As the guard spun, deliberating, he came to face Eanruig's tree. Eyes narrowing he advanced gun held out before him. The tension in Eanruig began to change, anger burned helplessness away to purpose. Slowly, silently, he thumbed out the blade from his multitool, two and a half inches of steel that gleamed from years of careful oiling and honing. The killer closed: seven feet becoming six, and then five. Soon he would step under Eanruig's branch, turn, and fire straight up at him from point blank. Knuckles white about the hilt Eanruig leapt stretching his body laterally from the tree. The guard, however, was much closer than he had thought and the knife glanced along the man's sternum, caught on a rib, and then had found purchase in the soft abdominal muscles. Gravity brought Eanruig, and the knife, down. The boy landed ribs first, driving the air from him, the knife fell beside him having opened up a ten inch gash in his enemy. The man stopped to scream. Eanruig didn't. Unable to stand he grabbed the blade underhand and drove it up wildly. The steel found in the hunter's uninjured wrist. Twisting desperately, trying to pull it free, the blade snapped with a sharp crack. The damage was enough, however. Unable to turn his wrist, the killer swung his entire arm to point the gun at Eanruig. Smashing the heavy base of the leatherman into the man's knuckles, Eanruig was just able to deflect the shot. Adrenaline flooding his system time seemed to slow, pain to fade enough for him to fold out the concealed pliers, enough for him to drive them deep into his enemy's throat. Gasping, stumbling back, the man grabbed at his ruined wind pipe. Eanruig sagged back down trying to force air back into his rebellious lungs while his stomach brought up everything he had ever eaten.

* * *

The smell of blood and gunfire greeted Rahne as she gradually returned to consciousness. Her entire world smelled of blood and gunfire residue. Four points of warm pressure on her side turned out to be a rabbit sitting on her. Slowly, she heaved herself toward her paws and then yowled in pain. Her hip had not set correctly and the formation it healed into would not bend in a way that would accept her weight. Time wheeled about her again, boundless, skittering about frozen thoughts of blind panic. Eventually, one metronome did set a progression to her world. The rhythmic pulse of the fire in her throat and the steady swelling of her tongue. Rahne was too deep in shock to thick the word dehydration, but the wolf knew. It knew the sweet alluring sent of water. It knew the need enough to drag its body to the spigot set in the wall.

The circular braid of metal, however, proved too smooth for the wolf's teeth to find purchase. Gradually, the mounting frustration drove Rahne back to herself. Phasing back to human she twisted the tap desperately and cool water gushed out of the small pipe in the wall. Turning the pressure down to a manageable torrent she gulped at the pure well water greedily. For a time she screamed for help, for release, for explanation, but her voice met the same obstinate silence as her howls. Eventually real sleep came to greet her. She met it as a wolf curled p in the corner behind the cot.

From that moment on time passed slowly marked only by things given up, by times before. There was the first time she had given up and made use of the drain in the floor. And the second. And the other times. There was the crying time when the pressure, the need, to cry drove her from wolf form to girl form, cold and utterly defenseless curled up on the plastic cot, sobbing. That even had ebbed away into a cold seething anger that glittered in her eyes much in the way the tears had. There had been howling times and screaming times – demands turning to threats turning to pleas.

The worst though, the absolute worst, was the hungry time. It had been days. No way of knowing for sure how many, but days certainly. She had slept five times. The rabbits which had been fat and frisky when first introduced were now visibly thinner and lethargic. For Rahne there was an icy constricting pain that radiated out of the middle third of her body. And there were the rabbits. They had been a great comfort at first. A strange mercy. Soft and soothing, they had become a cadre of confidants, a group of creatures who shared her insane plight. She couldn't understand why Moira had sent her here. She couldn't understand why he had come. And she couldn't understand why these people had locked her up, had hurt her so.

She could, however, understand the rabbits. Tame, unafraid of humans, locked alone with her. Of course she had grown attached, as had the rabbits to her; they even had grown less timid around her wolf form. And, of course, she was going to have to eat them to survive. Realization had brought on wracking sobs. She cried so long the tears dried in her eyes. She cried until the desperate need for water sent her clawing at the source again. She slept and she drank trying to stave off the inevitable, but dry retching heaves had told her that her body would soon be too weak to handle the rabbits.

She let her wolf form do it. She had never eaten anything raw, except for that one time Kitty had dragged her or for sushi, let alone something still alive. Still, she knew, of the two, the wolf could handle it best. The first kill was a disaster. She had lunged, jaws clamping down on either side of the rabbit. Its scream had been shrill and piercing and sustained. She had clamped her teeth down, trying to pt the thing out of its misery. The spine had snapped and organs had ruptured spewing hot blood into her mouth. To her disgust she swallowed it greedily, and to her horror the bunny continued to not die. The scream seemed to be interminable, then, without buildup, the animal had convulsed violently and then fallen mercifully still.

Rahne refused to focus on the taste, refused to acknowledge that her friend tasted wonderful. Instead, she focused on the sounds: the snaps and rips, thing them, and herself, but less than if she had actually enjoyed it. When the rabbit was entirely eradicated, every morsel consumed, the whole in her middle had barely abated. With anguished eyes she turned her head to her two other cocaptives. They were huddled against he bars of the cell, clearly now terrified of her. The next two kills were better. She aimed more, fangs finding throats – screams turning to gurgles to kicks to stillness. When they were gone she fond her tongue tracing her muzzle, lapping at the blood stained fur, trying to consume as much of them as possible. She had very nearly vomited the whole mess up.

Breath coming in quick desperate gulps she stumbled under the end of pipe moving as fast as her injured hip would allow. Phasing to human, she wrenched open the tap letting the icy water fall over her. She didn't notice when she ceased to scrub away rabbit blood and had began to scour out her own.

* * *

The first sensation that returned to Eanruig's consciousness was sound: the sound of his labored but recovering breath, the sound of his victim's rattling, failing breathing, and a hissing spluttering sound. It took him a few scrambling seconds to figure out it was the dying man's radio. Pulling it up, he held it to his ear trying to make out the words. Twisting one knob made the sound jump out painfully loud. Figuring the other must be the frequency selector he eased it back and forth. He managed to find a setting that filtered out most of the static but he still could not understand the words. They weren't speaking English or French or German either. He was pretty sure it wasn't Spanish or Portuguese. Italian maybe? What was clear was that there were several very angry men shouting into their portable transmitters. Twisting the volume down to a point where he could just make out that there were words being spoken, he stuffed the radio in his pocket, jammed his leatherman into the opposite, grabbed the fallen pistol and raced for the beach. The gun was heavy and black and completely foreign to him. He turned it back and forth in his hands. He found a little orange dot at the top and a little slide that could occlude it. He slid what he hoped was the safety obscuring the dot. Gingerly squeezing the trigger, he did not want to actually fire the gun, he felt the mechanism resist his pull. "Keen" he murmured under his breath, "that's sorted then." Examining the back revealed no obvious hammer to cock, only a long chamber grove. Sliding the chamber back, Eanruig fond a bright brass encased bullet. The bullet looked long, much larger than the nine millimeters he had occasionally practiced with at the range with his uncles. Other than that, all Eanruig knew was that the gun was loaded and probably a semi automatic. He didn't even know how many bullets were left in the clip. He let his mind focus on these little problems, little worries. There was so much he didn't want to think about: Rahne, the man he had killed, the unlikelihood of his surviving the day.

Crouch running, he made his way back toward where he thought he had left the boat. The only sounds were the staccato sizzle of shouted radio-carried words and his own stumbling sliding feet as a total lack of depth perception and mounting weariness confounded his footing. As he moved, a low cloud on the horizon caught his attention - dark and narrow and nearly vertical. Climbing a low hill he knew what he would see, his dingy chopped into fine kindling burning away. He had expected more killers. Four, however, seemed excessive. As did the long rifles they carried.

~~Author's Note~~

So I wrote this at the same time as my other Fanfic for Life Unexpected because hey, why not two entirely disparate genre. As such they are both really my first fics, and I could use some input. I know this is pretty angst riddled, but after what these teenagers have been through (including the ones largely off screen thus far) they are all pretty broken. Part of this story will be about putting them back together...but don't expect me to make it easy. While X-23 and Wolfsbane are, and will probably remain, the stars of the season I do intend for this to ultimately include the rest of the cast. My goal is to create a three lines some waiting story that remains interesting.

On original characters. I know. I'm not a particular fan of OC's myself, and yet I have two already. Let me make two promises. No OC's will be pivotal characters and all OC's will be human. I will, by necessity, need to include other mutants but I will only write in ones that already exist in the marvelverse and will try to stay true to their established characters. I'll try to limit this to an extent, the focus will be on evolution characters as much as possible, but sticking to them myopically would, I think, ultimately be detrimental to the story. Similarly, one of the major themes of Evolution was that the kids still lived in the world; they interacted with humans regularly, and, moreover, were encouraged (within reason) to do so. So there will be interactions with other humans, and these will largely, by necessity, be original characters. I'm not perfectly comfortable with this, but I don't see a reasonable way around it either without making it appear that the mutants are the majority instead of the vast minority in the larger scope of the world.


End file.
